After summer rains,
marble thumb snails and beetles
blot the window screens
with pearl and drone. Gardenias swell,
breathing is aquatic and travel
a long drawl from bed to world.
During drought,
the heat becomes a devil
girl with oven-red lips
who wants your brains puddled
in a brass-capped mason jar,
who wants the silver stripped
from your tongue, the evening pulse
between your legs, yes, she wants
everything from you.
from Terrain.org
DAVID TRINIDAD
from Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera, Season Two, 1965–1966
139
Long before there was
Court TV, there was Rodney
Harrington’s hearing.
140
When Stella perjures
herself on the stand, Rod cries
“That’s a lie!”—nine times.
141
Connie gets her test
results. Just what this messed-up
soap needs: more children.
142
I’m not sure lying
motionless in bed should be
considered acting.
143
Would you want Charles
Dickens read to you if you
were in a coma?
144
Betty alludes to
Orwell when her name is paged:
“Big Brother calling.”
145
Allison’s hand moved!
Looks like Great Expectations
is doing the trick.
146
Rossi sees movement
in her eye; direction, no.
Kinda like this show.
147
Snooping into Miss
Choate’s files: Betty Anderson,
candy-striper sleuth.
148
Oh goody, Stella’s
lies are beginning to catch
up with her. Squirm, bitch!
149
Turns out Miss Choate has
a heart, as well as an old
spaniel named Brandy.
150
The way Rodney strokes
his comatose girlfriend makes
me a bit nervous.
151
So many bad lines
and actors to poke fun at,
so few syllables.
152
For a D.A., you
sure are slow, Fowler. Russ has
the hots for your wife!
153
Allison wakes to
find her mother’s been replaced
by Lola Albright.
154
Amnesia might be
a blessing—best to forget
she’s part of this script.
155
Remind me never
to whiz to dinner in an
electric wheelchair.
Norm’s wet underarms—
proof he’s yet to discover
Arrid Extra Dry.
157
Grandfather Peyton
has furnished the mansion with
all sorts of Fox props.
158
Don’t worry, Ryan,
in ten years you’ll be the star
of a Kubrick film.
This is the continuing story of Peyton Place . . .
from Carbon Copy Magazine
JEAN VALENTINE
1945
The winter trees offer no shade no shelter.
They offer wood to the family of wood.
He comes in at the kitchen door, waving like a pistol
a living branch in his hand, he shouts
“Man your battle stations!”
Our mother turns to the kitchen curtains.
He shakes the branch, a house-size Great Dipper
points North over the yard:
Can it help? How about
the old dog, thumping her tail. Whose dog is she?
How about the old furnace, breathing.
Breathing the
world: a flier, a diver,
kitchen curtains, veterans, God, listen kindness,
we’re in this thing like leaves.
from Plume
PAUL VIOLI
Now I’ll Never Be Able to Finish That Poem to Bob
Now I’ll never be able to finish that poem to Bob
that takes off of a poem by Bob
where he’s looking out the Print Center window
at a man in a chicken suit
handing out flyers on Houston Street.
Mine has Plato saying man is a featherless biped
and Aristophanes slamming a plucked chicken
on the table and declaring the definition apt but flawed
and it ends with Francis Bacon
dedicated empiricist
experimenting with frozen food
stopping his carriage in a snowstorm
and hopping out to stuff a chicken with snow
It worked but Bacon got pneumonia and died
Without making a pun on bringing home the bacon
the poem closes on Bob saving Bacon’s life
with chicken soup. It would have been a long poem
and it would have made a lot of sense
and shown why I believe Bob Hershon is a wise man.
from Hanging Loose
DAVID WAGONER
Casting Aspersions
He told me I was casting aspersions on him,
and because he was sensitive and literary,
I knew he must be telling me I was sprinkling
unholy water on him, was sailing a phony
barb-hooked lure among his lily pads,
was gathering a lousy bunch
of actors to make a bad movie about him,
was pouring hot metal into molds
to anchor some satirical bobble-heads
that looked like him, was publishing
his rotten horoscope and crooked fortune
and knotting them, stitching them, looping them,
catching them up—but I wasn’t, and I said so
right to his face, and he began to cast
his own aspersions on the character
he thought I was playing in his private drama.
The Georgia Review and Harper’s
STACEY WAITE
The Kind of Man I Am at the DMV
“Mommy, that man is a girl,” says the little boy
pointing his finger, like a narrow spotlight,
targeting the center of my back, his kid-hand
learning to assert what he sees, his kid-hand
learning the failure of gender’s tidy little
story about itself. I try not to look at him
because, yes that man is a girl. I, man, am a girl.
I am the kind of man who is a girl and because
the kind of man I am is patient with children
I try not to hear the meanness in his voice,
his boy voice that sounds like a girl voice
like the tent in his pants will be years later
because he will grow to be the kind of man
who is a man, or so his mother thinks.
His mother snatches his finger from the air,
of course he’s not, she says, pulling him
back to his seat, what number does it say we are?
she says to her boy, bringing his attention
to numbers, to counting and its solid sense.
But he has earrings, the boy complains
now sounding desperate like he’s been
the boy who cries wolf, like he’s been
the hub of disbelief before, but this time
he knows he is oh so right
. The kind
of man I am is a girl, the kind of man
I am is push-ups on the basement
floor, is chest bound tight against himself,
is thick gripping hands to the wheel
when the kind of man I am drives away
from the boy who will become a boy
except for now while he’s still a girl voice,
a girl face, a hairless arm, a powerless hand.
That boy is a girl that man who is a girl
thinks to himself, as he pulls out of the lot,
his girl eyes shining in the Midwest sun.
from Columbia Poetry Review
RICHARD WILBUR
Sugar Maples, January
What years of weather did to branch and bough
No canopy of shadow covers now,
And these great trunks, when the wind’s rough and bleak,
Though little shaken, can be heard to creak.
It is not time, as yet, for rising sap
And hammered spiles. There’s nothing there to tap.
For now, the long blue shadows of these trees
Stretch out upon the snow, and are at ease.
from The New Yorker
ANGELA VERONICA WONG AND AMY LAWLESS
It Can Feel Amazing to Be Targeted by a Narcissist
Let’s just see if it fits, and your voice blurred, your hand brushing away
mine, me laughing because seriously who says that? I flashed out of my body
picturing you saying this to other girls, and laughed again. Those are words
that can only be said late at night in an outer borough, while Manhattan
glitters in rows of mocking unison from over the bridge. Those are the
moments when I think how did I get here followed shortly by okay whatever,
like now, sitting in the park, watching couples strolling hand-in-hand. Once I
made you cupcakes. In the morning before I left, I arranged them on a plate
and left them on your kitchen table. Don’t worry, you weren’t the first one I’ve
done that for. I’ll just think of the whole thing as a stretching exercise.
from The Common
WENDY XU
Where the Hero Speaks to Others
Dear mailbox. I have abandoned the task. There is no more glory
to resurrect, spoils of the marriage to pick over. She finds me burdensome and has moved out into the guest house.
I don’t remember building a guest house.
Many nights I have stumbled out into the unwilling streets and fallen
to my knees before you. O, mailbox. Your throat is swollen
and refuses to sing for me. You no longer bring me news of a timeshare abroad
which I might consider. You draw up from your long, black stomach papers
I will not sign. O, lamplight.
You are equally no friend. Beside you I deliver a monologue
correcting previous scholars about the usefulness of tulips. O, useless tulip.
There is so much I want to say to you when grinning, you mock me
for watching you from the window. I feel ashamed
for wanting you. For sitting quietly in a chair especially
to miss her. O, musty library flooded with sun. To rub her name
from the faces of your books.
from MAKE and Verse Daily
KEVIN YOUNG
Wintering
I am no longer ashamed
how for weeks, after, I wanted
to be dead—not to die,
mind you, or do
myself in—but to be there
already, walking amongst
all those I’d lost, to join
the throng singing,
if that’s what there is—
or the nothing, the gnawing—
So be it. I wished
to be warm—& worn—
like the quilt my grandmother
must have made, one side
a patchwork of color—
blues, green like the underside
of a leaf—the other
an old pattern of the dolls
of the world, never cut out
but sewn whole—if the world
were Scotsmen & sailors
in traditional uniforms.
Mourning, I’ve learned, is just
a moment, many,
grief the long betrothal
beyond. Grief what
we wed, ringing us—
heirloom brought
from my father’s hot house
—the quilt heavy tonight
at the foot of my marriage bed,
its weight months of needling
& thread. Each straightish,
pale, uneven stitch
like the white hairs I earned
all that hollowed year—pull one
& ten more will come,
wearing white, to its funeral—
each a mourner, a winter,
gathering ash at my temple.
from The American Scholar
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER
Albert Einstein
only a few people
really try to understand
relativity like my father
who for decades kept
the same gray book
next to his bed
with diagrams
of arrows connecting
clocks and towers
in the morning
he’d cook eggs
and holding
a small red saucepan
tell us his tired children
a radio on a train
passing at light speed
could theoretically
play tomorrow’s songs
now he is gone
yes it’s confusing
I have placed
my plastic plant
in front of the window
its eternal leaves
sip false peace
my worldly nature
comforts me
I wish we had
a radio sunlight
powers so without
wasting precious
electrons we could listen
to news concerning
Africa’s southern coast
where people are trying
with giant colored
sails to harness
the cool summer wind
with its special name
I always forget
last night I read a book
which said he was born
an old determinist
and clearly it was all
beautiful guesses
and I watched you knowing
where you travel
when you sleep
I will never know
from The Believer
CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES AND COMMENTS
KIM ADDONIZIO was born in Washington, DC, and now lives in Oakland, California, where she teaches private poetry workshops in her home and online. She is the author, most recently, of Lucifer at the Starlite and Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, both from W. W. Norton. Her verse novel, Jimmy & Rita, was recently reissued by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Addonizio’s work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, and other honors. She has two novels from Simon & Schuster and is currently at work on a second collection of stories and a play. She is a member of the Nonstop Beautiful Ladies, a word/music project. She plays blues harmonica and is learning the banjo. Visit her online at www.kimaddonizio.com.
Of “Divine,” Addonizio writes: “My brother once commented, ‘Now I get how writers work. You’re magpies.’ Which we both understood to mean: Writers scavenge from wherever they can. In the case of ‘Divine,’ I scavenged from Dante, Plato, the Bible, fairy tales, old vampire movies, whoever said ‘Only trouble is interesting’ is the first rule of fiction, early Christian flagellants, a trip to Australia where I
saw bats in a botanical garden, and my then-present emotional state. Which was, essentially: There’s no place like hell for the holidays. When I googled ‘magpies’ for this statement, I discovered they possess a few more writerly traits: They are clever and often despised, little poètes maudits. The Chinese considered them messengers of joy, but the Scots thought they carried a drop of Satan’s blood under their tongues. They are fond of bright objects. And then this: When confronted with their image in a mirror, they recognize themselves.”
SHERMAN ALEXIE was born in 1966 and grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. His first collection of stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), won a PEN/Hemingway Award. In collaboration with Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian filmmaker, Alexie adapted a story from that book, “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” into the screenplay for the movie Smoke Signals. His most recent books are the poetry collection Face, from Hanging Loose Press, and War Dances, stories and poems from Grove Press. Blasphemy, a collection of new and selected stories, appeared in 2012 from Grove Press. He is lucky enough to be a full-time writer and lives with his family in Seattle.
Of “Pachyderm,” Alexie writes: “Lying in a university town hotel, unable to sleep, I watched a National Geographic documentary about elephants. There was a scene of a mother elephant coming upon a dead elephant’s bones. The mother elephant carefully touched the bones with her trunk. She seemed to be mourning the loss of another elephant. It was devastating. Then, a few days later, I watched a CNN story about an Iraq War veteran who’d lost both of his legs to an improvised explosive device. He was confident in his ability to rehab successfully, but I also detected an undercurrent of anger. So, while I was working on a novel the mourning elephant and wounded soldier merged in my mind. And that’s where ‘Pachyderm’ had its origins.”
NATHAN ANDERSON was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1973. He is an assistant professor at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio, where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. His poems have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Sewanee Theological Review, and New Ohio Review.
Of “Stupid Sandwich,” Anderson writes: “This poem started when a few lines (a shadowy echo of what would become the speaker’s voice) surfaced while I was working on another project. As the speaker’s voice developed and the context began to take shape, I became interested in how this particular speaker responds and, more broadly, how all of us respond, when the daily pressures of a life become seemingly unmanageable.”